HBO deserves credit for devoting time and resources to the distressing and unsexy subject of obesity in America.

The pictures alone are grim. (Insert your own joke about putting down the chips long enough to watch...)

A medically sound, educational effort, the immense four-part documentary series "The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America's Obesity Epidemic" premieres Monday and Tuesday, (6-8:30 p.m. on HBO). It's full of smart tips, case studies and expert research, and a companion three-part series for kids begins with, "The Great Cafeteria Takeover," on Wednesday.

Produced in cooperation with major health agencies, it's good medicine for those who want to know how diabetes happens, what a fatty liver looks like and how exercise affects the heart.

What it's not is a takedown of the underlying problems that fuel obesity in America.

The bigger problem is the food industry, of course, as we know from a stroll down the salt-and-corn chip, sugar-and-corn flake aisles of the local grocery.

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How much weight do the industry lobbyists carry? Lobbyists got Congress to declare pizza a vegetable this year, to keep school lunch menus intact; they prevailed on Congress to resist efforts to reduce the amount of sugar, salt and fat marketed to kids; they blocked attempts at applying a tax to sugary soft drinks.

So while HBO documents the fact that two-thirds of Americans qualify as obese/overweight (68.6% of American adults), and carefully defines the terms, its doesn't go after the real villain.

The social and health problems of obesity and the science of fat take up most of the series. Only in the third hour does the film touch on the political: documenting how "the strong forces at work in our society are causing children to consume too many calories and expend too little energy." The marketing of unhealthy food to children, a $1.6 billion enterprise every year, deserves more attention. And the disproportionate effect on low-income children deserves special notice.

"The kind of food we eat is the kind that is profitable," the film states. If only that were the starting point for a documentary project of this magnitude.

Knowing the medical data is good. Encouraging physical exercise is wonderful. But holding the food industry accountable is key. Where's the next four-part extravaganza that will nail the culprit for training a nation's children to crave an unhealthy diet?

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